Peaceful Work Environment

We moved into a new building recently. I put up with missing doors, no break room, constant outages and other random fun times while they finished moving into the building since the contractor ran over and they didn't want to rent both places at once. Fine, annoying, but whatever.

But today, they announced they'll be installing the final piece of equipment for the next week or so...which requires drilling into concrete. There has been a jackhammer running less than 100 feet away from me all day.

I keep trying to think of horrible things to do to them, but I can't think of anything over the sound of a f'njackhammer going all day long.

Been there, done that. I worked in a place that was a renovated mill building and they were renovating the floor directly below us. Imagine, if you will, an entire summer of what sounded like constantly using a buzz saw on I-beams 6 hours a day.

What's also fun is working in a building where they're removing asbestos. This involves men in hazmat suits working in an sealed-off area ( with lower than normal pressure, so that any dust can only get in, and not out), and a very big air-pump-with filter constantly pumping air out.

We moved into a new building recently. I put up with missing doors, no break room, constant outages and other random fun times while they finished moving into the building since the contractor ran over and they didn't want to rent both places at once. Fine, annoying, but whatever.

But today, they announced they'll be installing the final piece of equipment for the next week or so...which requires drilling into concrete. There has been a jackhammer running less than 100 feet away from me all day.

I keep trying to think of horrible things to do to them, but I can't think of anything over the sound of a f'njackhammer going all day long.

It's only Tuesday.

While not a jack hammer, I've been listening to hammer drills and sawzalls on-and-off for the past year and a half. Occasionally, you'll hear the thump of material falling into the drop ceiling from the work they're doing on the roof. When they're close, the vibration really gets to you.

At my last job, we produced products for people involved in an activity with a reasonably high chance of death. Our product was never at fault (while I was working there), but for liability and record keeping reasons, we often got the units returned to us by the families to get the records off the unit to try and piece together what happened.

Back when I first started the job, no one had explained this part to me. One day the office manager walked into the room with a serious look on her face, wearing latex gloves and carrying a smashed up unit. She explained to me that we needed to try and figure out what happened to the unit. Considering it looked like the unit had been hit by a truck, Iaughed and asked he managed to make it out in one piece with his unit looking like this. She replied in the calmest tone possible, "He didn't, he's dead." and all my quick wit could come up with was "Oh." I didn't make jokes about smashed units after that.

Along a similar train of thought... Years ago I worked for a company that made the electronics that went into a pacemaker. Quality was taken seriously, but there were still jokes. About a year later, one of the line-workers relatives (mother IIRC) had a heartattack and needed a pacemaker. One of the ones built around our equipment was used. It became very personal at that point [although it would obviously not have any impact on his relatives already implanted device] and there was a very significant change in attitudes.